Accounts

The
idea that Obama made a mistake by focusing on health care instead of
the economy seems to be catching on on the left as well as on the
right. But my question remains: what are we talking about, specifically?

There was a window early last year when Obama could have pushed for
a bigger stimulus and could have pushed for a major recapitalization of
the banks with public funds, so as to encourage more lending; that
recapitalization would probably have required nationalizing a couple of
institutions. At the time, the administration wasn’t at all focused on
health care, which it was leaving largely up to Max Baucus.

But Obama didn’t do that. And ever since, it’s been hard for me to see what options are left.

Maybe, maybe, a relatively small job-creation program could have
been pushed through this fall. And maybe, if it had been sufficiently
unorthodox — say, a job-creation tax credit — it might have had enough
bang for the buck to make a noticeable difference.

But aside from that, what? We could have had a lot of speeches about
the economy. Would that have helped, absent a policy to make things
better?

In my view, there are two defensible hypotheses:

1. Obama was doomed to have a bad economy regardless.

2. He missed a key window, early on, back when some of us were
screaming at him to go bigger; but that window closed by the summer of
2009.